Mobile Application Technical Support - What is included?

31-08-23

Application release is not the last stage of interaction between customer and developer. After publication in App Store and Google Play, the life of a mobile product is just beginning – for effective development it needs professional support and regular updates. If left unattended, the project will gradually lose its relevance and technical advantages. The client suffers a double loss: first, due to the outflow of mobile audience and loss of leads, and later – when the hands come to “revive” the application and solve the pile of accumulated problems. The longer an application remains unsupported, the less chance it has of generating stable revenues and long-term business benefits.

Five reasons an application needs technical support

1. technical problems

Application bugs are inevitable, even if the product was created by professionals using the latest technologies. Sooner or later, any technical tool will be frustrated by bugs. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the bugs are fixed quickly and do not accumulate. How technical support professionals manifest bugs:

• Track complaints in App Store and Google Play reviews;
• Analyze error reports sent to the application;
• Perform periodic diagnostics.

Application errors are not just an inconvenience for users. Bugs are dangerous for lost leads when problems occur when a user performs a targeted action. For example, the shopper is kicked out of the shopping cart, cannot send contacts through the form, online payment hangs, etc. In such cases, the company actually loses potential customers who could have signed up for a service or purchased a product, but did not do so because of a technical failure. If such cases become widespread, it is not only a blow to reputation, but also a tangible financial loss.

2. MVP Development

The role of technical support is particularly relevant when launching an MVP – a minimum viable product built in a short time to test different scenarios. An MVP has a minimal set of features and requires mandatory post-launch monitoring and control. Behavioral analytics, audience requirements, statistical data, leads, performance metrics, demand for specific features and services – all of this is the basis for developing and scaling the application. Technical support is an integral part of this process.

Marketers analyze and improve strategies, and technical support specialists put these ideas into practice – releasing updates, adding functionality, redesigning, and fixing bugs in parallel. This approach makes it possible to take the application from its initial stage and turn it into a promising business development tool. Teamwork of marketers, programmers and designers helps to achieve the best result. This is the case when the fate of a project literally depends on the quality of technical support.

3. Increased competition and user demands

As time goes by, new trends in mobile development emerge and newer, more advanced products enter the market. An active audience demands to improve the application, add convenient options and increase performance. If the growing needs are not met, it will affect the rating of the application in stores and the popularity of the product in general. In such conditions it is more difficult to compete, former leaders become outsiders – and it happens quite quickly. High-quality technical support of the application helps to prevent such a situation.

4. Emergence of New Algorithms and Technologies

New device models are released all the time, and iOS and Android operating systems are updated. The App Store and Google Play algorithms are also constantly evolving: applications in the stores are regularly checked for compliance with the latest requirements. If something goes wrong, the product owner receives a notification, recommendations for updates, and a deadline for fixing the problem. Without professional support, such warnings will be ignored and the application will lose rankings or even be removed from search.

5. Scale your business and build traffic

The business expands and requires more functionality from the application. The complexity of tasks increases and the existing functionality cannot keep up. Users experience a lack of tools and demand for the product declines. The application may not be technically able to handle the load as the user base grows. For example, the product is designed for thousands of users, but their number is already measured in millions. In such cases, it is necessary to scale the product and increase its performance – this is also done by technical support specialists.

Provides technical support for the mobile application

Technical support services can be roughly divided into two categories – regular and ad hoc:

• The basic regular work is scheduled maintenance and support of the application functionality. The contract for such maintenance is concluded for a certain period of time at a fixed price or on a per-job basis.
• Extended package of special services includes measures for improvement and future development of the product. The cost is calculated individually, and the work is done on a project-by-project basis.

The most advantageous option for the customer is long-term maintenance, where a single contractor provides both basic support and comprehensive development of the application. The contractor keeps the application in good technical condition and improves functionality, design, and usability as needed. The customer receives regular reports, sees the scope of work performed, and has transparent pricing. This approach saves time and money and gives more guarantees of a quality result.

Regular maintenance

• Fixing bugs detected by diagnostics. QA engineers regularly check the health of the application and run tests using specialized services such as Firebase Crashlytics. They analyze reports, fix bugs, and perform appropriate engineering work. Problems are fixed before users start complaining about them en masse.
• Handling user complaints. Some problems can only be identified through user feedback or automated bug reports. To make sure we never miss a problem, we constantly monitor and analyze store feedback, and specialists respond to each alert, assessing the criticality of the issues and prioritizing them. Serious outages are resolved on an urgent basis, while non-urgent issues are handled on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Scheduled application updates. If a clear list of future application updates is created during development, they are included in the regular work plan. For example, if it is decided to add new options, content, and monetization tools every month, such work can be estimated and calculated in advance by including a fixed price in the estimate.

Extended Support – Application development and enhancement

The development strategy of any commercial product, including an application, is a dynamic process that depends on many factors. Fluctuations in audience sentiment, market environment, demand for services, level of competition, behavioral factors, advertising algorithms – all of these affect the application development scenario. The set of extended support services is flexible and can include the following areas

• Redesign – partial or complete change of design, color scheme, structure, usability and other components of UI/UX design. It is carried out in cases of corporate rebranding or when users critically dislike the existing design.
• Improve functionality – Add new features that enhance user capabilities and allow the company to implement new marketing strategies. For example, managers do not have time to manually process applications – order acceptance, payment, and delivery tracking are automated. Or a company wants to launch a new loyalty program – the tools are built into the application.
• Performance Enhancement – improvement of technical indicators to ensure fast application performance under increasing load. It is a necessary stage when the audience grows, the structure and functionality of the application increases, the number of services or product items grows rapidly, but the existing capacity is insufficient for all this.

Developing an optimal application development strategy requires more than an intuitive approach-you need to analyze actual numbers and compare them to real business needs. This is done by collecting and analyzing metrics at all stages of the sales funnel. Examples of such metrics include cost per lead, value per user, return rate, number of active sessions during the reporting period, bounce rate, etc. Automated collection and analysis of metrics is done in specialized services such as Google Analytics, AppMetrica, AppsFlyer and others.

The results of the analysis show whether the application fulfills its practical tasks or remains an expensive toy for the company that does not bring any benefits to the business. Metrics analysis in combination with the conclusions of marketing research allows to turn the application into an effective and profitable business tool. The work plan can be designed for a long period of time (for example, for several months or a year), but it is worth considering its flexibility and the possibility of adjustment.

Why is it better to entrust technical support to a developer?

Functionality and usability updates require the professional teamwork of several specialists – a marketer, a UI/UX designer, front-end and back-end specialists, a project manager. Ideally, this is done by the developer who created the application. There are several reasons for this:

• The developer knows the architecture of the application, deeply understands the technical nuances, and is able to understand problems faster.
• Together with the customer, he has created the concept of the application, analyzed the business, the competition, and the target audience. He sees the development prospects better than an outside technical specialist.
• Responsible at all stages – development, release, technical support – to make the customer more secure.
• Experienced in long-term communication with the customer so that the parties do not have to spend time searching for common ground.

We maintain most of our projects after release and find this approach to be the most effective. We also maintain applications developed by other developers. If it is not our development, we analyze the project from scratch before starting work: we study the architecture, assess the technical state, look at the competition, get acquainted with the marketing strategy. After the initial audit, we take over the project on a permanent basis.

How much does it cost to support the application?

The price of technical support depends on several factors:

• Product Features – its purpose, scope, functionality;
• The customer’s budget, desires and expectations;
• Package of services – from a minimal set of basic technical work to keep the application running to global product modernization;
• The current technical state of the application;
• Post-release operation time (new projects are less stable and more risky, so they require special attention);
• Application developer – our studio or a third-party company.

Submit your project for a free audit – we will offer various technical support packages and calculate their cost.